Friday, 6 February 2009

Thoughts from the afterglow

I feel Neo-esque.When he first sees the Matrix scrolling greenly down a computer screen, he’s flummoxed and stunned. As the movie progresses, his view of the matrix toggles back and forth between the numbers and the ‘real’ world that they represent.And then there comes a sort of epiphany; the views merge and he can see the numbers for what they are. He has grasped a new language.Of course, this is an imperfect analogy (aren’t they all?)But the spirit of the thing’s sort of the same.

Especially when you consider that I was once a little girl who used to cry bitter, desperate tears when faced with my math homework that no amount of cajoling or positive reinforcement (or, on occasion, a sharp smack from my father) could remedy. And now here I am, (resigned or victorious, you decide), not so scared anymore, and finally able to see that behind the big mass of 1s, 2s, 3s and graphs, there’s the world that I am just trying to understand.(All caveats about the ability of statistics to elicit perfect understanding apply.)